The Ambassador's Daughter (1913) User Reviews

Spies!

[boblipton · 5/10 · 12 March 2020]

Robert Brower is an ambassador and Miriam Nesbitt his daughter, pursued amorously by George Lessey. However, there are dirty doings afoot, as foreign spies Charles Ogle - best remembered for playing the Monster in the first screen adaptation of FRANKENSTEIN - and Mary Fuller steal some important papers from Brower's office - and Miss Nesbitt's gloves. Can Lessey recover them? Oh, yeah, the papers are important too.

It's an early short subject for director Charles Brabin, who soon would jump to Fox Films, where he would be an important director for twenty years, including some of Theda Bara's torrid movies. He would marry her, reader, and they would remain wed until her death in 1955.

Not exactly James Bond . . .

[cricket30 · 6/10 · 9 June 2013]

. . . as this 14 minute, 33.45-second long 1913 silent movie "spy thriller" from Edison Manufacturing Company lacks both shootouts AND car chases. (Before you object, don't forget that years earlier Edison had been doing shootouts--in LIFE OF AN AMER!CAN POLICEMAN, for one--and car chases, as in POLICE CHASE SCORCHING AUTOMOBILE.) Certainly enough time is wasted on the lame romantic angle here that, in the absence of a more worthy leading man, director Charles Brabin could have retained the title character, cut the chaff, and squeezed in BOTH a shootout AND a car chase. The fact that Edison's henchmen in his failing movie business could not see their noses in front of their faces and give America the thrills for which it yearned speaks volumes as to why Old Tom the Light Bulb Inventor had to wash his hands of the whole shebang less than five years after THE AMBASSADOR'S DAUGHTER came out. After all, there were not enough beloved circus icons around to electrocute one every week (see ELECTROCUTING AN ELEPHANT), but that was about the extent of the imagination of Edison Manufacturing when it came to "thrilling" the American public.

Unsubtle But Entertaining Melodrama With Some Effective Performances

[Snow Leopard · 1 September 2005]

What this short melodrama lacks in subtlety, it mostly makes up in entertainment plus a couple of good performances. The story-telling is straightforward but good, and the cast is solid, with Miriam Nesbitt and Marc McDermott particularly effective in their roles.

Nesbitt stars as "The Ambassador's Daughter", and her role gives her quite a bit of material to work with, as her character is by turns flirtatious, elegant, and adventurous, trying to clear her beloved and save her father from a diplomatic disaster. As the villain, McDermott (who appears in quite a variety of roles in the Edison features of the mid-1910s) plays his role with enough relish to be entertaining while not going overboard. The other cast members also generally make good use of their opportunities.

The story has quite a few implausible turns, but they seem deliberately designed to entertain. Most of the settings are interesting, and it seems to have been made with some skill, so that the broader moments usually come across as good-natured gestures to the audience, rather than forced developments or film-making flaws. Overall, it's a little above average for its era and genre.

A tense, well made melodrama

[deickemeyer · 25 June 2017]

Pictures come and go so fast that it is rather rash to say of any of them that it shows more effective handling than any other of its kind; such a statement would pass merely as a form of compliment. This picture is by Bannister Merwin and is a tense, well made melodrama, as speedy in its ending almost as the waterfall that hangs from the face of the crag. Mark MacDermott plays the villainous clerk of the embassy and it seems strange to us that the ambassador (Robert Brower), didn't see through him in the first act. We wouldn't trust a man who acted or looked like that. Miriam Nesbitt plays the ambassador's daughter and George Lessy is the earnest hero while Charles Ogle and Mary Fuller play the not very important conspirators with whom Mark is in league. A very good offering. - The Moving Picture World, February 1, 1913